yours sincerely
by LevyRasputin
Summary: 6/15 - Introspective, Shuuhei ponders about the mess he's getting into. Sequel to 'equals', but you can read it also as a single story


He let pass some hours, hanging around the headquarter with an obnoxious sleepy look on his face, a calculate attitude to make sure that he wasn't driven by the sudden heat of the moment. The gold ring he took from Soifon out of a complicate twist of events had been quiet and put inside the pocket of his hakama for the whole morning and far past midday, until Shuuhei realized that, no matter how long he might extend this hiatus from his thoughts and feelings, he wouldn't get rid of it easily. That he wouldn't get rid of it at all. So, he left his much more efficient subordinate in charge of things and made his way to the 2nd division headquarters.

Maybe it was just the afterglow, but he felt like he had learnt to understand her better. Soi wasn't as cold as people thought she was. In his eyes, it was just a matter of perspective: none ever stood close enough to her to understand what her small eyes movement, a little flexion of the lips' curve, or a softer or harder glance could mean. Soi was a lonely person, that's for sure, but she was not complaining about it, and she wasn't doing anything to change that state of things. She got a real talent in suffering alone, standing up straight.

With a sudden twitch, he snorted, and frowned in an uncomfortable shade of self-annoyance. He obviously knew it was just the afterglow, and that feeling was driving him uselessly mad at himself: he felt part naïve, and part unfaithful. Fucking someone doesn't mean you've learnt to read through a so well constructed mask, and Soi was so good, just as good as a ninja could be, at hiding her true self.  
But he was just as good. He wondered why and when, in his early teens, he had established that hiding his real intentions and his true feelings was the way – the only way he could handle his emotions.

The ring into his pocket was not as heavy as he wished it to be, his steps up to the 2 nd Division headquarters were no different from usual, there wasn't any room for romance in that warm, sleepy afternoon, and for a moment, the resolution he had come to in front of the breakfast cookies, to go after her no matter what, seemed to fade in one last rush for self- preservation. Once Matsumoto told him that it was oddly common to find the more pessimist and disenchanted men among those that looked like the cheapest fucks, and that's because a proper use of a camouflage of easiness was the best defense against being really affected by love matters. It worked, and he had tested it a lot of times: women ran away in tears at your obnoxious, cynical grin and you didn't have to bother about it anymore, even when you cared.  
Shuuhei got self confidence, but he knew he was a coward, especially when it came to troublesome feelings. He was the kind better hidden under a sarcastic grin than an earnest smile of sorrow. But, beside that, he knew that he might have something in store that Soi seemed to need more than anything: the capabilty to look at her straightforwardly and talk to her frankly enough to go through the thick algid aura constantly surrounding her small, yet so rigid, steel-like, figure.

He wondered if it might be better for both of them that he stopped there and headed back to his own division, to relieve his fukutaichou from some of the work he had shamelessly dropped on her. He knew he was the kind who knows by instinct when he was getting into troubles, and Soi was undoubtedly a big trouble. But he had take a peek inside of Soi's silent and lonely world and that sight had been fatal to him, no matter how hard he tried to mask it and to ignore that tight knot that had formed down his throat as he entered the 2 nd division taichou office with the cheesiest smile he was able to invent out of hand.  
She was sitting at her table, surrounded by an unbelievably huge amount reports that seemed to duplicate at touch, light eyeshades marking the orbs of her ebony eyes. Shuuhei felt his stomach ache and burn at her sight like it had been filled with gasoline, and he realized that his last attempt to get out of that mess had completely failed.

- Hi, Soi – he said briefly, as she welcome him in her office with nothing more than a bewildered gaze – there is something I have to give you back…


End file.
